Kirby water-meter project nears completion

Published 12:00 am, Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Being able to save time and money is the expected payoff for the city of Kirby as it nears completion of a citywide water meter replacement program.

About 300 meters are left to install to bring Kirby's water delivery and monitoring up to date. The meter replacement project began in 2012 as the city attacked a problem that saw money being poured down the drain. Literally.

“We average about 1 million gallons of water use a month but were only billing for about 700,000 gallons,” said Public Works Director Roger Aguillon. “That's a huge discrepancy.”

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Mayor Tim Wilson said the city set aside the $260,000 for the purchase of 2,600 of the meters, which now can be monitored by computer from inside a pickup's cab.

Previously, monthly meter inspections of all Kirby water usage took one week and required eight employees to work about two hours each week to accomplish the task.

“This saves a huge amount of time,” Wilson said. “Our employees used to have to walk and read every meter. Now it takes one guy about 2½ hours to read all the meters in the city.”

The Kirby City Council in October 2012 approved the $260,000 bid to allow Hydro Plus Solutions of San Antonio to lead the effort to replace and calibrate all of the city's 2,300 residential meters and 300 to 400 commercial and governmental units.

The manpower savings, the mayor said, will allow the city to put its employees to work in areas that previously had to be shelved in order to get water meter reading completed.

“You look at six, eight workers spending time out of one week each month, compared to one employee getting it done in one afternoon a month. That's huge for us,” Wilson said.

He added the city tackled larger water users first, focusing primarily on businesses, apartment complexes and schools. Residential areas, the majority of the meters, have occupied most of the past year's installations.

In replacing the meters, Wilson said the city found out that meters are to be replaced, on average, every seven years.

“Some of the meters (in Kirby) are older than me,” he said. “We have lifelong residents of Kirby, retirees, who tell us they've never had a meter changed.”

At the time of bidding, city officials said that the city's average read is about 65 percent to 70 percent of actual usage. Anything below 90 percent is considered inefficient.

The new meters also allow the city to monitor water flow by the week, by the day and even by the hour.

One water user called the city, upset that his bill was high. Having been gone all month, the resident disputed the bill.

“We tracked his usage with the new meter. We found that two or three times a week, at 3 a.m., his water usage would spike,” Aguillon said. “It was his sprinkler system. We called him, told him what we found out, and he said he forgot all about his sprinkler system.”

Aguillon said he has told some people their water bills may be higher, “but that's going to show the actual water they've been using. They've been getting a break for several years. This reading is going to be much more accurate.”

The project should be complete within six weeks to two months, Wilson said.